In some communication scenarios, it is desirable to have users paired up with one another. One example scenario where such pairing is desired is in the area of Public Safety. More particularly, Public Safety officers or other types of first responders may enter hazardous situations in which the officers are paired up to provide support and aid for one another and to ensure that all officers are able to vacate an incident scene when instructed to do so. For example, in one scenario two firefighters may entire a burning building, and may be manually paired up in pairs of two in order to provide support in navigating into the building and, when necessary, when exiting the building. Similar concerns may arise with respect to other types of incident scenes.
Conventional pairing mechanisms may include a command central officer on-scene manually pairing up officers or firefighters prior to entering the incident scene. A remote dispatcher may perform a same or similar function. However, this type of ad-hoc assignment results in non-optimal pairings, difficulty in identifying who has been paired up and who hasn't, and pairings whose subsequent failure to remain in a vicinity of one another is difficult to track and report.
Thus, there exists a need for an improved method and system for initial device pairing prior to entering an incident scene area, and for continued tracking and reporting of a status of the pairing at the incident scene area.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.